


#ffcccc

by riverbanks



Series: monochrome [3]
Category: Boys Love
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-04
Updated: 2007-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbanks/pseuds/riverbanks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noeru's alternative to painting is sex; he has sex when he's not drawing, he draws when he's not having sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	#ffcccc

Noeru's alternative to painting is sex; he has sex when he's not drawing, he draws when he's not having sex. It's the most simplistic and honest way to put things, and Chidori may not like to hear things as they are, but whenever they argue about it, Noeru tells him life's too short to waste time over-complicating things that are just as simple as they seem to be, or decorating the truth with pretty words so it doesn't sound as ugly as the truth tends to be. But Chidori is all Noeru has left, and he doesn't like arguing, bickering, being so cruel to the only person who's never left his side; the only person, he knows, who'll be there till the end.

So he draws. Every time they argue, he draws seashells, starfishes, portraits of stickfigures playing in a beach with pink sand, and shows them to Chidori without a word the next day. Noeru doesn't make promises, but he can offer watercolor.

They argue a lot in the beginning, and as Noeru goes through his first few dozen men, his wall becomes a living, breathing reminder of the taste and the smell of every man he touches, of their stubble scratching his neck, of their hands on his thighs, of his face in the mirror when he wakes up in the morning and pushes complete strangers out the door, of all the things he just wants to soak up in the whiskey he's way too young to be drinking, and forget about.

Sometimes he wants to set those drawings on fire, and maybe the wall too. But then Chidori says things like _your drawings remind me of home_, and Noeru looks around and sees it, and feels eight years old again, and that wall is suddenly the first truly beautiful thing he's seen in a long, long time.

For a little while, he draws more and cruises less. It's when some guy approaches him with a job, a real job, and Noeru is wordless for a minute, because he doesn't remember the last time a man approached him with anything else than sleazy looks that makes him laugh or money he doesn't want. In his first test shoot, which comes out so good it ends up published as it is, his agent and the photographer have a mock argument over the color of the shirt he is modelling, one saying it's peach, the other saying it's salmon. To Noeru, it's pretty close to baby pink. When he gets back home, he looks for that color in his pastels and sketches what he can remember of the photographer's face.

It's a few months' worth of editorials before Noeru gets his first cover in a rather big magazine, and in front of him, people congratulate him for his beginner's luck. When they think he's not listening, they all agree he just sucked his way up the scale. The truth is Noeru's found something he enjoys doing and is good at without even trying too hard, and overworking himself with too many editorials at the same time beats sitting around all day doing nothing.

He still has men over two or three times a week, but he's always too busy or too tired to go out and pick them up in bars and dark alleys, so he makes do with what he has at hand - a model he meets in a shoot, a photographer he works with a couple times, a reporter trying to get an interview, the guy who does his hair. People who shave properly and remember to wash their hands. He drinks less and gets more sleep at night, so when Chidori goes up to the rooftop at school to meet him, Noeru is usually awake, and they can talk about his shoots, or the show that was on TV last night, and Noeru pays more attention when Chidori explains his class notes.

They don't argue as much anymore, and after a while Noeru finds he can't remember the last time they had a really ugly fight. The wall against his kitchen is covered with drawings that overlap each other, and he's starting to have trouble finding free spaces on the wall against his bedroom too.


End file.
